I don’t remember what specifically brought this to mind today, but it was 10 years ago that my research advisor shared some words that would stick with me, influencing me over the years whenever I needed a push or two.

Sorry, I love sharing those images and deeply wish I had taken the time to examine more stuff in an electron microscope when I had the chance. Back to the point.

He told me that there were 3 paths to success.

Be a genius

Get lucky and make a discovery

Work hard

This can apply to pretty much anything.

Take wooden dovetail joinery, for example. You could have a natural knack for woodworking, or you can work hard at it, and practice until you reach an acceptable quality level.

Work hard, and you can do anything, get anywhere.

That brings me to a second piece of advice the same research advisor gave me.

The only way to ensure you don’t fail is to not try at all.

The original advice was actually about how not using a piece of equipment was the only sure way to avoid breaking it, although that’s not entirely accurate, is it? But I’ve since tweaked it to make it more generally applicable.

I sometimes create hurdles for myself. Hurdles, excuses, secondary goals and tasks that eat up my time and take away from the big picture. Things like that.

I can’t do hand dovetails, my chisels suck. I can’t plane a bevel into that wood, there might be tearout. I can’t organize my workspace, because I haven’t finished my cabinets yet. I can’t finish my drawers because the glue-out is gnarly.

Excuses, excuses.

If you want to get better at hand dovetails, you’ve got to try, and then try, and then put the practice in. Each joint will get better, slowly but surely.

How do you get better at cooking or baking? Trial and error. You work at it. Or you can be a culinary genius. Or maybe you come up with a new dish and… sorry, I don’t know how the “get lucky and discover something” advice would apply to cooking or baking.

I find myself guided by the you can’t fail if you don’t try advice more and more.

What if I take my infant and toddler somewhere by myself and my infant poops? Will my son stand still and wait patiently next to me while I change his sister’s diaper somewhere? Where will I change her? What if there’s no family restroom, or a changing table in the men’s room?

The only way to avoid such uncertainties is to not try, and I find that to be unacceptable.

I’ve heard from beginner woodworkers over the years who want to get started but complain about not having the budget for every tool under the sun.

You do need some tools, but you can do woodworking at almost any budget.

There are exceptions to the “just hit the ground running” philosophy. For instance, you can’t get into wood or metal turning without a lathe and tooling, all of which aren’t likely to fit into small budgets.

But let’s say you buy a lathe and your first project doesn’t quite look as good as you envisioned it. Try again. If you give up and push your lathe into a corner to collect dust, you’re guaranteed to not produce anything, good or bad. If you keep at it, chances are you’ll get better.

There are good reasons to avoid trying something, such as if there’s a safety hazard. Or maybe failure would be extremely costly or time-consuming to fix. In that case, maybe don’t try and risk failure.

I like to think that I have gotten better at knocking down the walls, hurdles, barriers, and whatever else might stand between me and a project, task, or goal.

Sometimes the results aren’t quite optimal, other times it works out well and in hindsight I feel silly about the hesitation or avoidance.

I’m not a genius. I’m not creating trends – I guess this is the analogous to being lucky or discovering something. So I’ve got to work hard to get anywhere.

And you know what? Working hard might still not get me to my goal. Maybe I’ll never be perfect at dovetails. (Sorry, hand-made dovetail joinery just seems like a good example to repeat.) But without trying, there’s a 100% chance that I won’t get better.

I have gotten very good at making excuses, but I’m getting better at knocking them down.

Although, without my self-created barriers, there wouldn’t be ToolGuyd. Spending a morning at Home Depot, Lowes, Sears, and then the internet to shop for a 16 ounce hammer, and many other examples just like that, back when I had the time, helped lay ToolGuyd’s foundation. Would ToolGuyd exist if I were the type to make any purchasing decision quick and effortlessly? Probably not.

Seriously, thats the comment you took time to make. I enjoyed the post, found it motivating, and having just started a little building/creating/fixing club at school thought it be great to share with them. And i thought i was a negative dude.

You have to spend money on good quality tools to make it more enjoyable to produce results.

I tried fly fishing many years ago with an $18 rod and reel I bought from Big 5. I thought “this really sucks.” Then I went with a friend and used his expensive Orvis rod and the world of fly fishing open up right before my very eyes.

Now on that note this typically works for someone that has never done a particular activity before. I also knew a guy that was an excellent pool-player and he could grab the cheapest cue from the rack and still beat anyone that challenged him.

I purchased a small woodworkers bench vise on craigslist for about $15. Mounted it to my bench and it’s pretty much only good for hanging trashbags on the handle. I have since bought a yost 10047 heavy duty bench vise and it’s night and day.

Great post, Stuart. I can say even in the realm of woodworking, I am a complete novice. I identified some basic projects I wanted to make and set my budget and a drill/driver combo, circular saw and random orbital sander later and I am actually making stuff. Is it top notch fine handmade quality furniture? Not a chance, but there are actual, usable items in my home that I built myself and that feels great.

It also gives me the desire to get better, to improve on the mistakes I made on my last project. Sure, at some point I’ll be looking to invest in additional tools to expand my capabilities, but it’s crazy to expect to do nothing until you have a complete workshop!

Like you said though, it applies to life in general. Most of the time the biggest hurdles are the ones you place yourself!

Stuart, while you appear to be into woodworking , my passion is auto repair. Many of the same points you’ve mentioned have applied to my journey as a shadetree mechanic.

Much in the same way you don’t need a bunch of expensive joinery equipment and other gear to start out in woodworking, you don’t need to shell out a huge amount of money to start working on a car either.

I started out with a hand-me-down socket set and simple stuff like oil changes and changing out a spare wheel. Over time, my expertise and tool set have grown to the point where professionals have invited me to assist on side jobs. I’ve saved thousands of dollars, and actually made money on several occasions.
What’s more, I’ve got a sense of security and confidence around cars that most people will never have.

The way to this point has not been without its share of misery and effort though. For every failed dovetail, mis-alligned rip cut and cracked board you’ve made, I assure you I can match that miserable bounty in the number of seized, rusted, rounded and impossible-to-reach nuts and bolts I’ve encountered in my time under the hood.

In any endeavor worth doing, failure is an inevitability, but also a sure step on the way to ultimate success.

This reminds me of something I have figured out over the years doing DIY, and more recently, a beginner at woodworking.

In most projects (the ones that challenge me, anyway) I will always hit a wall where things will feel impossible. The thing to know is that it’s not. It’s just a matter of taking it a step at a time and trying different ways to do the thing. If that doesn’t work, try a different way, etc. Sit and figure it out. The internet and especially youtube has helped in this process greatly.

Knowing the “wall” is going to happen changes things for me. When I hit it, I remember, “oh yeah, this is the wall thing again.” And boy, does it feel good when I get through that wall (or around it or over it)!

That’s something I sometimes struggle with – facing a huge discouraging wall. I feel like I’ve got a too-small hammer and a dull chisel, and can’t see any wait to start chipping away at it.

I search for weak spots, but can’t find any. I start to panic, and then either waste a lot of time or find a distraction or reason for lengthy delay. Or I waste time panicking.

“Sit and figure it out” has been too challenging for the largest impossible-seeming walls.

I’ve been getting better at identifying a “this is what I need to do” task and getting to it. Sometimes it won’t effectively chip away at the wall, but I’ve found that doing anything is better than panicking.

And if I can’t move forward, it’s at least motivating to move sideways. “Hey look, I got something done, maybe I can start chipping away at that wall now!”

Oh, yes, and when something fails, that’s ok too. Usually, I learned something. And it’s not life and death. The result may be a bunch of scrap wood, or a torn apart kitchen that has to be lived with for a longer time. 🙂

It’s definitely true that in order to succeed, you generally need to fail, over and over again, until you suceed and get good at repeating that success. Pretty basic, but yeah, some people think you should instantly be good at something and if you don’t, you need to find whatever it is you can do flawlessly without any effort. Very, very few things ever work like that.

The thing that bugs me about some of this ‘motivational’ stuff is that it appears to operate in a vacuum – some ideal world where everyone has the same opportunities and failure is only caused by a person making (or not making) the attempt.

I feel like I have to point out that sometimes, in fact, many times, failure occurs not because of lack of effort, but because of forces actively opposing progress. You can be the best wordworker on the planet, but if you have some jerk sabotaging your tools or your projects, your finished projects might be crap not because you’re bad at woodworking, but because you’re a poor judge of character or too trusting of others. I also can’t stand it when people call this ‘not taking responsibility’ or ‘blaming others for your failures’, when other people are the direct cause of the failures.

I agree with you. Our world overall seem to be trending toward politically correctness instead of the truth. On the other hand, the only thing that we can change is ourselves. So while it’s fine to recognize that sometimes other are the problem. It’s usually better to adapt and change so we can protect ourselves better from external problems.

I appreciate your heartfelt words…I set large goals for mysel, then smaller goals to achieve them…as each small goal is met ,I’m filled with pride.a sense of accomplishment..I may never reach all my big goals but the journey is worth taking for me….

Nice bit of introspection there. I know I share a lot, if not all of those same excuses. I often find myself watching 10 or 20 youtube videos about a particular task, and then still never get around to it. I should have just watched one or two and then switched off the pc/tv and gone out to the garage to just do it… instead of paralysis by analysis or paralysis by over researching.
My other weakness is abandoning a project before it is complete. Once I get to the point where I know it is “doable” I can lose interest and move onto the next project instead of finishing the previous one. For example I might create and electronics project, get it wired and test it out, but never take the final step of putting it into an enclosure and finishing it. Once I know it would work, I’ve lost interest. Does anyone else have this “fear of success by quitting 75% of the way” problem that I do?

If finishing the project is not worth it to you, then why waste your time? There’s this idea in our society that not finishing projects is a negative trait, I would posit that knowing when you’ve gotten everything you can from it and moving your attention to something else is a more beneficial trait.

That said, I have the problem of finishing projects in a hurry because I want or need them now. Then I always regret not spending the time to do it right.

There are rare occasions when a (usually small) project goes just perfect. Cherish them but don’t expect the magic to grow, it’s all a matter of learn and do, do and learn. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate more that there’s more than one way to do most anything. Tools are far less important to me than they once were but the ones I use most often are typically fairly good quality and cutting edges are the best I can find.